The Speakers

Patricia Capsi Morales is a Senior Research Scientist at Technical University of Munich in the field of assistive and rehabilitation robotics. She completed her PhD in Information Engineering at the Italian institute of technology and University of Pisa, Italy under the supervision of Prof. Antonio Bicchi. She conducted a period abroad at Imperial College London with Prof. Dario Farina and a 1-months visit at Arizona State University with Prof. Marco Santello. Her thesis won the IEEE Italy Section 2022 PHD Thesis Award on New Challenges for Energy and Industry – Technology. Moreover, she participated in Cybathlon 2020 Global Edition as a member of the SoftHand Pro Team, where they won the silver medal, and she was in charge of the management of the team. Her main research interests focus on the application and development of soft synergy-based robotics technologies in upper-limb prostheses, neural interfacing and body representation.

Talk: TBA

Giorgio Grioli received his PhD in Robotics, Automation and Bio-Engineering from the University of Pisa in 2011, with a thesis on identification for control of variable impedance actuators. He is the author of more than 140 scientific papers, published in scientific journals and international conference proceedings, in the fields of soft robotic actuation, robotic hand design, haptics, human-machine interaction. Co-inventor of numerous robotic devices, helped found two spin-off companies. He has served as Associate Editor for the ICRA and ICORR conferences (since 2015) and as Editor for MDPI – Actuators, Cambridge – Robotics, and Springer – IJRR journals. Over the years he supervised the development of more than 40 master's theses in the Automation Engineering and Mechanical Engineering courses and several bachelor's theses and student projects for the Robotics course. Member of the information engineering doctoral board of the University of Pisa, where he supervised 6 students and is supervising another 5. He also supervised a PhD student in Smart Industries and is supervising two PhD students of national interest in Robotics and Intelligent Machines. Since September 2023 he is Senior Researcher at the University of Pisa, where he teaches "robot control" for the "robotic and automation engineering" masters' degree course and "automatic controls" for the "vehicle engineering" masters' degree course.

Talk: Toward Natural Bionic Prostheses Via Multi-Modal Synergetic Control and Impedance Co-Design.

Dr. Helen Huang is the Jackson Family Distinguished Professor in the Joint Department of Biomedical Engineering at North Carolina State University (NC State) and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC-CH) and the Director of the Closed-Loop Engineering for Advanced Rehabilitation (CLEAR) core. Her research interests lie in neural-machine interfaces, wearable robotics (robotic prosthetics and exoskeletons), learning-based wearable robot control, wearer-robot interaction and co-adaptation, and human motor control/biomechanics. She was a recipient of the Delsys Prize for Innovation in Electromyography, NIDILRR Switzer Fellowship, NSF CAREER Award, ASA Statistics in Physical Engineering Sciences Award, and NC State ALCOA Foundation Distinguished Engineering Research Award. She is a Fellow of AIMBE, a Fellow of IEEE, and a NC State faculty scholar. She is currently the Editor-in-Chief for the IEEE Transactions on Neural Systems and Rehabilitation Engineering.

Talk: Harnessing Reinforcement Learning and Physiological Models for EMG-based Neural-Machine Interface Design